Why Finder cannot perform a URL search?

Hi there I hope someone could help me. I recently switched from pc to mac and I love it. I have however a problem and I cannot find a solution anywhere. I have a website and I constantly upload pictures, about 200 a day. These pictures are taken from internet and they are URL like www.blabllabla.com/blalal/blabla.jpg
In windows I was able to upload them directly from windows explorer. When I pressed upload, windows explorer came out and in the search bar I just paste the picture's link.
Now, I have to download the picture, save it to a folder and then upload it to my website as Finder does not perform a web search. This is really frustrating for me as it is very unproductive and then I have to delete all the pictures as well.
Is there a way to make finder perform a url search for pictures? I really don't want to have to computers at work to make my life easier.
Any help would be much appreciated
Cris

Windows Explorer is essentially Internet Explorer. It is the web browser with local machine browsing baked in. Finder is not a web browser at all. I don't think anyone here would disagree that Finder is one of the biggest weaknesses in OS X, despite the improvements it has in Lion. You could try one of the Finder replacements out there to see if it fits the bill. Path Finder is the most highly regarded one out there, though whether or not it will meet your needs, I cannot say.Path Finder 5 by Cocoatech

I could probably provide more specific help if I better understood exactly what you are doing and how. I assume that before, you were using Windows Explorer as a web browser, and transferring photos directly from the browser to a remote server? It seems to me you could mount the remote server on your Mac and save pictures directly to that via Safari. For example, I have a network-attached server on my home network, and I can simply right-click any picture, use "Download as" and browse to that server and save it there. I could easily customize that server as my default location, or put it in the sidebar for single-click access from the "Download as" menu item. I'm sure I could come up with other, easier ways via plug-ins, extensions, other 3rd party apps, etc.

Ok… that's definitely an interesting way of doing things. Well I can't think of a way to do that exactly in OS X. However, what you can do is pre-download the pictures off a website using an application like DeepVacuum. You can point this app to a website and have it download just image files, for example. Then you can point to the folder it makes and browse the files on your computer. Realistically, this isn't much different from what you are doing now. Windows Explorer is downloading those images anyway the way you are doing it now, just like any web browser is (they are stored in a temporary cache folder).

Right now, I am trying out DeepVacuum to grab all image files off Avatarist.com, and just now I aborted it because it had grabbed quite a lot of image files and was still going. But they are sorted and categorized like the website is, and browsing them now is far faster than if I was to do so via Safari. There are other apps besides DV that do a similar task, but this type of route is really your best option. You have to plan up-front to suck down the site's images, but once done, browsing and uploading will go faster.

mmmm, the thing is i don't download images from one site only...sometimes i just need one picture from a site and that's it. but I'll give it a try and see how it goes
I appreciate your help

Well I can see how the way I suggested may be a bit cumbersome. If you had ftp access to these sites, even as a guest, you could quite easily browse the contents the way you would as if they were on your computer. But even that would require saving each site to your sidebar for easy access. When it comes right to it, Finder simply isn't a web browser.

One last thought I just had. If you can upload files to your server using ftp, why not save an alias for that to your sidebar in Finder? Then use Safari to browse the sites you need an image from and when found, just right-click it, select "Download Link File As…" and pick your server off the sidebar.

Well I can see how the way I suggested may be a bit cumbersome. If you had ftp access to these sites, even as a guest, you could quite easily browse the contents the way you would as if they were on your computer. But even that would require saving each site to your sidebar for easy access. When it comes right to it, Finder simply isn't a web browser.

One last thought I just had. If you can upload files to your server using ftp, why not save an alias for that to your sidebar in Finder? Then use Safari to browse the sites you need an image from and when found, just right-click it, select "Download Link File As…" and pick your server off the sidebar.

that sounds a bit complicated lol...i thought you can only add files and folders to the sidebar....gosh Finder it really is the only weakness of osx

that sounds a bit complicated lol...i thought you can only add files and folders to the sidebar....gosh Finder it really is the only weakness of osx

Oh heck no. You can add any remote server that OS X can connect to. With Finder selected, select Go from the menubar, then Connect to Server…, punch in the server address (it supports afp, ftp, sftp, smb, and maybe a couple others), then hit Connect. You'll get a prompt for a username and password, but you can store it in the keychain. Once you are connected, just go to a subfolder and add it to the sidebar. Try it with this one:

Enter that exact address using Connect to Server… and log in as Guest. Once in, drag the pub subdirectory to your Finder sidebar, under Favorites. Disconnect from the server, then click on that new sidebar item. You'll be prompted to connect again. You should be able to do exactly this with your own server.

Oh heck no. You can add any remote server that OS X can connect to. With Finder selected, select Go from the menubar, then Connect to Server…, punch in the server address (it supports afp, ftp, sftp, smb, and maybe a couple others), then hit Connect. You'll get a prompt for a username and password, but you can store it in the keychain. Once you are connected, just go to a subfolder and add it to the sidebar. Try it with this one:

Enter that exact address using Connect to Server… and log in as Guest. Once in, drag the pub subdirectory to your Finder sidebar, under Favorites. Disconnect from the server, then click on that new sidebar item. You'll be prompted to connect again. You should be able to do exactly this with your own server.

I did it and I have to say that it is little bit quicker,but still not enough for what I do..Aaaargh thanks your support
I hope Apple reads these threads and do someting about it

I did it and I have to say that it is little bit quicker,but still not enough for what I do..Aaaargh thanks your support
I hope Apple reads these threads and do someting about it

Honestly, in this respect I don't think they need to do anything. Finder is a file browser, not an HTML reader/web browser, nor should it be. Windows is renown for its bloat, and shoehorning everything including the kitchen sink is much of that reason. Managing a website from a browser has also got to be the least efficient way of managing a web site. There are much better ways to do it.

Honestly, in this respect I don't think they need to do anything. Finder is a file browser, not an HTML reader/web browser, nor should it be. Windows is renown for its bloat, and shoehorning everything including the kitchen sink is much of that reason. Managing a website from a browser has also got to be the least efficient way of managing a web site. There are much better ways to do it.